Missing Mothers: An Overlooked Aspect of Spartan Population Decline

The former East Germany is facing a demographic crisis. In the immediate aftermath of German reunification, young women no longer had to get pregnant to get an apartment of their own, job security collapsed, and day-care became expensive over-night. The birthrate dived dramatically. Now, twenty years later, the extreme uncertainty of the post-reunification era is past and women are having children again at the same rate as their mothers, but because there are many fewer young women of child-bearing age the population is not recovering. People speak of the “missing mothers.”

The situation reminded me of the dramatic decline in Sparta’s population between 480 and 370 BC. While some scholars (e.g. Chimes) have questioned the magnitude of the decline, most accept the numbers and prefer to concentrate on blaming the Spartans for their problems. Aristotle, of course, blamed Sparta’s women since they could inherit property, and women are (according to him) inherently greedy, grasping and irrational. Hodkinson ran demographic models to demonstrate how female inheritance results in inequitable distributions of wealth over seven generations. Other historians focus less on how wealth became concentrated in a few hands and more on the fact that the Spartan state failed to respond adequately to the resulting manpower crisis by reforming access to citizenship.

Either way, the Spartans, due to their abnormal laws (female inheritance and polyandry) and their fanatical and irrational adherence to these laws, are to blame for their own decline. But as Figueira has pointed out, Sparta’s population was growing or at least stable throughout the archaic period. Either the laws on female inheritance and polyandry did not exist in the archaic period, or they cannot be made responsible for Sparta’s population decline in the classical.

The Great Earthquake of 464, on the other hand, is an event which allegedly took 20,000 lives in Sparta alone, and its role in Sparta’s decline needs to be re-examined. The accounts of the earthquake are nothing if not dramatic. Pliny claims only five houses were left standing, and there are less credible tales of youths surviving because they ran out of a gymnasium to chase a hare, while the army was saved by marching out in time. While the details may be hard to credit, I think it is safe to say the earthquake was catastrophic, significantly, without impacting the strength of the army.

Meanwhile, while some historians dismiss the ancient accounts as incredible, Hodkinson goes to the other extreme of dismissing “modern guesswork” about women and children being more heavily impacted by the earthquake simply because it is not mentioned in ancient sources. Given the misogynous bias of ancient sources and the focus of most ancient accounts on Sparta’s military strength, I have no problem using common sense in the absence of a specific reference. Ancient sources rarely mention women or children in any other context either!

Following Figueira’s overall thesis that the Great Earthquake was the catalyst that set off a chain reaction ending in Sparta’s decline, I’d like to suggest that the impact might have been even more dramatic than Figueira contends. If – as is reasonable – women and young children were killed in disproportional numbers, then the size of the Spartan army would not been seen to decline for almost thirty years. Since the youth of the agoge were not disproportionally affected, they would have continued to graduate from the agoge and fill the ranks of the army for at least 14 years after the earthquake. Thereafter, for at least another 10 to 15 years, it would have been possible to maintain front-line strength by retaining men who would normally have gone off active service, i.e. by increasing the number of reserve age-cohorts on active duty. Only when the age of the reservists made it unpractical to retain them, would the dramatically reduced numbers of graduates from the agoge become evident in the army.

The number of children entering the agoge, on the other hand, would have declined dramatically.  In the first seven years the numbers would have been down because of the children killed outright, and thereafter enrollment would have been restricted because of the dramatic decline in birthrate, in other words, because of the “missing mothers.” Or more acutely, the missing wives.

Married men, those citizens in the army who marched to safety, would have lost their wives, while the youth in the agoge would have lost their future brides. Obviously, some women survived, but if the number of surviving women was sufficiently disproportionate to the number of men, then the resulting situation might well have fostered the introduction of polyandry. It is significant that polyandry is not mentioned in Herodotus. The hypothesis of disproportionate casualties among women, maidens and girls during the earthquake of 464 would help explain not only the population decline of the second half of the 5th Century but also the evolution of such a peculiar marriage custom for this part of the world at this period.

The shortage of Spartiate women would also explain the emergence of new-classes of semi-citizens such as mothakes/mothones, nothoi, and neodameis. If there was a shortage of Spartiate sexual partners following the earthquake, it would be only natural for the men, particularly the bachelors, to take perioikoi, helot or even foreign women – if not to wife – at least to their beds. They would then, particularly in face of the increasingly acute military manpower shortage, have had a strong interest in seeing the sons of these unions educated and at least partially integrated into the system. The fact that none of the above classes of quasi-citizens is found in reference to individuals prior to the earthquake suggests to me that such semi-citizens either had not existed before or had not existed in sufficient numbers to be worthy of mention.

All in all, the thesis of “missing mothers” seems to explain more about Sparta’s decline in the later 5th Century BC than any other theory I have seen put forward.

READER SURVEY: Help Select a Cover for "Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer"

As I work on the re-write of the second book in my Leonidas trilogy, I have reached the stage where I am trying to select the best cover design for “A Peerless Peer.”

This book covers Leonidas’ life from the age of 21 to 35, the period in which he was a Spartan citizen but not yet a king. It is the book in which Gorgo first plays a significant role as she grows up from a child of 6 to become a young woman, wife and mother at 20. In this book, Leonidas marries and has children, but he also goes to war more than once.

Compared to the third book in the trilogy that will describe Leonidas’ rise to power, his reign and follow him to Thermopylae, this book is more focused on domestic affairs and domestic policy. Hence I have consciously opted for an image that does not invoke warriors and war. Also, because Gorgo plays such an important part, I wanted the image of a woman on the cover as well.

To the right are two cover designs that fullfill my personal criteria, and I would like your opinon of which you think is best. Which of these covers is more likely to attract readers? Which is most appealing? Please take a moment to take part in the survey and give me your opinion.

A year from now you could then have the fun of holding the finished product in your hands and say “I helped choose this cover.” Or, “I liked the other better - most people must have bad taste!” Either way, I hope you’ll enjoy putting in your two-cents worth and giving me your opinion.

Thank you for your time!

Where's Ares

Before I became a serious (if amateur) scholar of Sparta, I always assumed that the patron god of the famous warriors of Ancient Greece would be God of War, Ares. After all, Athens, the city of the philosophers and seamen, had chosen between Athena and Poseidon, the Goddess of Wisdom and the God of the Sea respectively. But for Sparta, I thought, there could really only be one choice: Ares. It came as a surprise to learn that the Sparta’s patron goddess was Athena.

As I learned more about Sparta, of course, the choice made more sense. Sparta was not, as modern commentators would like us to believe, a society obsessed exclusively with war, but a society which placed as high a value on training the intellect as the body. Sparta valued thought and science. (See the excellent article by w. Lindsay Wheeler, “Doric Crete and Sparta, the home of Greek Philosophy,” in Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History, Vol. 3, # 2). So giving pride of place to Athena was understandable. But, Ares must then come second, I thought.

Wrong again. As Nikolaos Kouloumpis outlines in his article “The Worship and the role of Religion in the formation of the Spartan state,” (Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History, Vol. 6, #1), Sparta’s most important festivals, the Karneia and Hyacinthia, were dedicated to Apollo. Even the Gymnopaedia, arguably the most famous of Sparta’s annual festivals, was dedicated to Apollo and Artemis, Dionysus and Leto. Clearly, there is a relationship between the reverence for Apollo and Sparta’s renown in the field of music and dance. Certainly, these festivals dedicated to Apollo provided the occasions for choral and dancing competitions, and the performances attracted tourists from throughout the ancient world, who in turn admired Spartan prowess in these disciplines.

The more infamous than famous festival of Artemis Orthia was, as the name implied, dedicated entirely to Artemis. Apparently, the cult of Menelaus and Helen was only slightly less important, although we did not know how the Eleneia was celebrated. In fact, in addition to these, Kouloumpis lists cults to Asclepius (!), Achilles, Hercules, Alexandra/Cassandra, Agamemnon, Castor and Pollux/Polydeukes and Helios. Ares does not rate even an “honorable mention.” While the heroes Achilles, Hercules, Agamemnon, Castor and Polydeukes clearly have close associations with Sparta’s legendary roots, the reason Sparta should honor Asclepius and Helios with festivals is not readily apparent – at least to me.

Turning from festivals to sanctuaries, Pausanias, in his detailed guide to the “significant” sites of Sparta, records only three temples out of more than 150 temples, sanctuaries and shrines that are dedicated to Ares. Two are notably located outside of Sparta proper, one in Amyclae and the other even farther away in Geronthrai. The only temple to Ares in Sparta itself is one in which the God of War is shown in chains, according to Pausanias because “in Lakonia they think the god of war will never desert them if they keep him in chains; [just as] in Athens they believe Victory will stay with them forever because she has no wings.” (Pausanisus, Book III, 15:6). By comparison, there are ten temples/shrines to Athena, six to Zeus, and five to Aphrodite. The Devine Twins, Castor and Polydeukes, Apollo, Artemis, and Poseidon and Asklepios also all rate more temples than Ares.

While the large number of sanctuaries dedicated to Athena and Zeus hardly need an explanation given their power and prominence in the ancient Greek pantheon, it does seem odd that Aphrodite, Poseidon and Asklepios should receive comparatively more honors than the god of war in land-locked, warlike Sparta. Poseidon might be explained in that he was also called the “Earth Shaker” and, given impact earthquakes had on Lacedaemon, the Earth Shaker was clearly a god to be appeased. Notably one of Sparta’s temples to Poseidon is to the “Horse-Breeding” Posiedon, and so a reflection of Sparta’s interest and success in equestrian sports.

But why do Aphrodite and Asclepius place ahead of Ares in terms of the number of sites dedicated to them? One possible explanation would be the association of Aphrodite with Kythera, which was part of Lacedaemon for the better part of 500 years. Allegedly, the worship of Aphrodite originated on Kythera, and conceivably the cult spread from there to the mainland of Lacedaemon. However, it is notable that to date the only temple from the Classical period to have been identified on Kythera was dedicated not to Aphrodite but to Asclepius. Possibly the worship of the God of Healing also moved from Kythera to Sparta. Alternatively, the need to treat battle injuries fostered a particular reverence for Asclepius. Such an interpretation and the fact that there appear to have been more temples to Asclepius than Ares suggests the Spartan’s trusted more to their own skills to win wars, than survive the aftermath.

More important, however, is not the relationship between Ares and Asclepius as such but rather the fact that Sparta was filled with sanctuaries and temples to a great diversity of gods, demi-gods and heroes. By no means was Spartan worship narrowly focused upon the god of war, or even warrior heroes such as Achilles. Instead, the heroes Heracles, Castor and Polydeukes, whose greatest deeds were performed outside the context of war, receive more attention. This plethora of religious/cult focus in turn suggests that Spartan society was far less narrow-minded and obsessed with things military than most commentators imply. At a minimum, the religious landscape of Lacedeamon should give us pause and induce us to question whether Sparta worshiped war at all.

Review of "Antigone's Wake" by Nicholas Nicastro

Antigone’s Wake: A Novel of Imperial Athens by Nicholas Nicastro describes Athens’ campaign against Samos in 440-439 BC through the eyes of the playwright Sophocles. Allegedly, Sophocles was one of the ten elected Athenian generals who conducted the campaign under the overall leadership of Pericles. Although there is no attempt to apologize for Athens’ aggressive and imperial policy and many of the negative aspects of Athenian society are described in the course of the book, Nicastro clearly likes Athens and his characters in this book better than he liked his heroes or Sparta in Isle of Stone. Throughout the book, the tone is light-hearted and whimsically self-critical rather than oppressive and hopeless, making it a much easier and more pleasant read than Isle of Stone.

Particularly well-drawn is the hero Sophocles. Nicastro very effectively portrays the great playwright as a man who is at once vain and insecure, a man proud of his accomplishments and yet conscious of his failings. He is a man with weaknesses, but not without virtues and conscience. All in all, he is a likeable protagonist and one which the reader readily follows.

The portrayal of Pericles was also intriguing. Since I know very little about the historical Pericles, I have no way of judging the accuracy of Nicastro’s portrayal, although from what I do know the fictional character represents a legitimate interpretation of the historical figure. Certainly, Nicastro’s Pericles was effective in the context of the novel, where the "rational" Pericles serves as a good foil for the more emotional Sophocles. Because Pericles epitomizes “rational” policy and “realpolitik,” he also advocates cold-blooded political expediency and so embodies Imperial Athens, a role that is appropriate for the most famous Athenian politician of his age.

Sophocles son Iophon likewise plays a believable, if more monotone role in the novel, as the spoilt son of a successful father. Fathers of teenage sons will probably identify strongly with Sophocles in his disappointment over his son's refusal to recognize his achievements and his frustration in trying to provide wise guidance. The relationship between father and son is at once completely modern and compellingly authentic, as a variety of ancient writers also complained about the rudeness of youth and their lack of respect for their fathers. In short, the phenomenon appears timeless.

Unfortunately, all three women characters in Antigone's Wake are mere steriotypes: the intelligent whore (Aspasia), the nagging wife (Nais) and the stupid teenage girl, Sophocles’ daughter Photia. Whereas Aspasia and Nais are well drawn steriotypes, who still play their roles within the novel effectively, Nicastro’s failure to breathe life into Photia is a serious flaw in the novel.  Nicastro's plot requires Photio to fulfil a key function and provide a dramatic climax to the novel. Because Nicastro neglects Photia for the larger part of the novel and makes no effort to develop a character rather than a steriotype, she fails to play her assigned role convincingly. In consequence, I found the ending of the novel a disappointment after an otherwise good read.

The Strength of Silence

In the ancient world, the Spartans were (in)famous for their culture of silence. Ancient “Laconophiles” collected alleged examples of Spartan speech all characterized by pithiness, and Xenophon stresses the – evidently unusual – ability of Spartan youth to hold their tongues except when directly addressed. Perhaps the most graphic example of the Spartan distaste for excessive verbiage, however, is the story of the Samian ambassadors, who sought Spartan aid in their fight against Polycrates. According to Herodotus, the Samians gave a very long speech after which the Spartan’s complained about having forgotten the start of the speech by the end of it. When the Samians then brought a bag and said the bag needed flour, the Spartans replied that the word ‘bag’ was superfluous – and then proceeded to give the aid requested. (Herodotus 3:46). Because Spartan eloquence was characterized by an absolute minimum of words, we describe minimalistic speech as “Laconic” event to this day. But while the Spartan culture of reducing speech to its bare essentials and speaking only when necessary was described and admired by ancient observers, the reasons for Sparta’s culture of silence are less obvious.

W. Lindsay Wheeler in his excellent article “Doric Crete and Sparta, home of Greek Philosophy,” (Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History, Vol. 3, # 2), claims that silence was a critical component of the Spartan educational system. He alleges that silence was purposely imposed on youth so that “their thoughts should gain force and intensity by compression” and so their speech would be “short, concise and to the point, like their spear points.” He goes on expound on the depth to which philosophy lay at the roots of Spartan society and culture. Clearly, a society that valued philosophical thought based on observation of nature, scorned idle chatter, and it is fair to assume that in Sparta men were expected to speak only when they had something worth saying.

During a recent intensive training course in administering first aid to the victims of traumatic injuries, I was struck by an additional feature of the Spartan culture of silence – its utility on the battlefield. The training focused on providing first aid to trauma victims in an environment without medicine, medical technology or specialized first-aid kits. It was heavily informed by recent military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the causes of battlefield injuries have changed dramatically since the age of Sparta, the result – severed limbs, massive hemorrhaging, life-threatening puncture wounds and crippling fractures – would have been familiar to any Spartan ranker. Astonishingly, despite all the advances in modern medicine, the first response probably has not changed much in two and a half millennia.

This is where the Spartan culture of silence might have proved its utility – if it was not part of the very reason for evolving it in the first place. In warfare, serious casualties are inherently traumatic, which means the victims inevitably suffer from shock and hypothermia. Both conditions worsen, if a patient is agitated and unable to keep still. If, on the other hand, a victim has been trained to remain still and silent, then they have a better chance of also remaining calm and so preserving rather than squandering their strength, blood and breath.

Furthermore, it appears (but I would welcome a medical opinion on this!) that the natural pain-killers the body produces in situations of extreme trauma are more effective if adrenalin levels are lower. Thus, developing behavior that reduces or shortens the period in which adrenalin is pumped into the body, may increase the speed with which natural painkillers are released into the bloodstream. Thus, far from being super-macho heroes, who ignored pain, as portrayed in most cartoons, films and novels, Spartans may literally have experienced less acute pain when dealing with battle wounds.

If we accept that this was a possibility, then it is even possible that Spartans, having observed how calm and stillness improved the survival rate among battlefield casualties, concluded that cultivating these behavior patterns in their children and youth would help them to respond accordingly on the battlefield. In short, the culture of silence and self-control may have helped Spartans to experience less pain and survive more readily on the battlefield, and the fact that self-control and silence was effective on the battlefield may have reinforced the culture of silence in the agoge and among adult, male citizens.

Review of Nigel Kennells’ "Spartans: A New History"

Nigel Kennell has produced a good, readable history of Sparta in his latest release Spartans: A New History (Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2010) It is the kind of work that provides readers, who are not specialists in ancient history, with a solid understanding of the fundamental characteristics of Spartan society and the bare-bones of Spartan history. This is a good book for non-experts to buy and keep as a reference on things Spartan.

For readers already familiar with the subject matter, Kennell provides a concise summary that can be used for reference, but fails to break new ground that I could detect. Maybe I was expecting too much after finding his The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta such a brilliant foray of common-sense in a field of discourse dominated by so much nonsense. Certainly, in this new work I found his discussion of topics – whether the Spartan constitution or the Spartan army – more gripping than his chronological narrative.

For me personally, the most exiting section of this book was the chapter on the Spartan army. Here, for example, I learned that the Spartan army buried its dead in the lands where they fell, according to Kennell as “a matter of pride, for Spartiate graves served as tangible signs of their city’s ability to project power.” (p. 157). Thus, the familiar admonishment allegedly given each Spartan soldier by his mother “with your shield or upon it” could not have come from a Spartan source! This is a revolutionary insight – fully in line with my own speculations about “unnatural mothers.” (See my earlier blog entry.) The rest of the discussion on the army was equally logical and useful.

Kennel is in his element when focusing on a topic rather than trying to cover the whole universe of things Spartan from Lycurgus to the Romans. I hope that in his next book he will return to the format of The Gymnasium of Virtue and enable readers to benefit from his meticulous research combined with his refreshingly sensible and insightful perspective.

Untold Stories of the Spartan Agoge

The image of the Spartan agoge in most literature is a catalogue of horrors no loving parent would inflict upon his/her children. Paul Cartledge even makes a great fuss about the word agoge being used for cattle as well as children – although the English word “to raise” is also used for both children and cattle without, to my knowledge, all American, British and Australian children being denigrated to the status of livestock. (Paul Cartledge, Spartan Reflections, Duckworth, London, 2001.)

The assumption in literature and film is that boys (and possibly the girls) were taken from their homes at age seven and never again had anything to do with their parents. Instead they were under the tutelage of the Paidonomos and his assistants, elected herd leaders, “lovers” and eirenes (whatever these were). The boys are described as learning virtually nothing, running around virtually naked, stealing to eat, fighting constantly with their peers, but intimidated and abjectly obedient to their elders.

Yet what we know of Spartan society is not consistent with such an educational system.

First, there is strong evidence that family ties were as strong in Sparta as elsewhere. No society, in fact, has ever succeeded at destroying the institution of the family -- even when they tried as in Soviet Union and Communist China. We know from modern experience that attendance at even a distant boarding school does not inherently indicate a lack of parental interest in a child’s development. Thus, it is ridiculous to think Spartan parents lost interest in their children just because they were enrolled in the agoge. The agoge, after all, was located in the heart of Sparta. Far from never seeing their families ever again, the children of the agoge would probably have seen their fathers (who had to take part in civic activities and eat at their syssitia) and school- and army-aged siblings daily.

In addition to the comfort of daily contact with fathers and brothers as desired, we can assume that the agoge was not opened 365 days a year. Just like every other school in history, the agoge will have had “holidays.” We know of at least 12 festivals each year. (See Nikolaos Kouloumpis, “Worship and the Role of Religion in the Formation of the Spartan State,” Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History, Vol. 6, # 1.) The Spartans, furthermore, were notorious for taking their religious festivals extremely seriously. Soldiers on campaign could return home for festivals particularly important to their specific clan, and the entire army was prohibited from marching out during others. (Hence the Spartan army was late for Marathon and only sent an advance guard to Thermopylae.) It is not reasonable to assume that what applied to the Spartan army did not apply to the public school. Far more probable is that the agoge closed down for every holiday and like school children everywhere, they gleefully went “home for the holidays” along with their eirenes, herd-leaders, instructors and all other citizens.

The equally common presumption based on fragmentary ancient sources that the boys never got enough to eat and routinely took to stealing to supplement their diet is inconsistent with a functioning economy. No society can function if theft is not the isolated act of criminal individuals but rather a necessity for all youth between the ages of 6 and 21. If all the youth were stealing all the time, the rest of society would have been forced to expend exorbitant amounts of time and resources on protecting their goods. Every kleros would have been turned into an armed camp, and there would have been nightly battles between hungry youth and helots desperate to save their crops and stores. Nothing of the kind was going on in Sparta, a state known for its internal harmony and low levels of common crime. Nigel Kennel argues persuasively that theft was only allowed during a limited period of time at a single stage in a boy’s upbringing (Nigel Kennel, The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London, 1995). As for only being punished for being caught, that is very nature of all punishment seen from the thief’s perspective, since no undiscovered crime is ever punished. Nothing about that has changed in 2,500 years.

The notion that the boys constantly fought among themselves and were encouraged to do so is equally untenable. Boys of the same age cohort would inevitably serve together in the army. The Spartan army was famous for the exceptional cohesion of its ranks. You don’t attain such cohesion by fostering competition and rivalry to an excessive degree. A strong emphasis on competition was prevalent throughout ancient Greece. Spartan youths engaged in team sports, and there would have been natural team spirit and team rivalry. There can be no question that now and again such competition and rivalry turned bitter and could degenerate into fights. But Sparta more than other Greek city states needed to ensure that such rivalries did not get out of hand because all citizens had to work together harmoniously in the phalanx.

As for the youth of the agoge being abjectly respectful and obedient to their elders, such behavior is incompatible with high-spirited, self-confident youth – yet this is what the agoge set out to produce. (See my earlier blog entry on “Citizens or Automotons.”) Spartan discipline appears to have produced exceptionally polite young men by ancient standards. Since observations about Spartan youth at, say, the pan-Hellenic games or on visits to Sparta does not require inside knowledge of Spartan society, we can assume that these reports have a certain validity. But there is a vast difference between being polite and respectful on the surface and being cowed, intimidated and obedient to an exceptional extent. English school-boys of the 19th and early 20th Century also had a reputation for politeness that had nothing to do with being beaten down or docile.

The thesis that Spartan youth learned almost nothing (except endurance, theft, competition and manners) is untenable for a society that for hundreds of years dominated Greek politics and whose school was admired by many Athenian intellectuals. Starting with the circumstantial evidence, Spartans could not have commanded the respect of the ancient world, engaged in complicated diplomatic manoeuvring, and attracted the sons of intellectuals like Xenophon to their agoge if they had been as illiterate and uneducated as some modern writers like to portray them. 

Spartans clearly knew their laws very well, they could debate in international forums, and their sayings were considered so witty that they were collected by their contemporaries. Indeed, some sources claim that “devotion to the intellect is more characteristic of Spartans than love of physical exercise.” (Plutarch, Lycurgus:20) Furthermore, Sparta is known to have entertained leading philosophers and to have had a high appreciation of poetry, as evidenced by the many contests and festivals for poetry, particularly in the form of lyrics. The abundance of inscriptions and dedications found in Sparta are clear testimony to a literate society; one does not brag about one’s achievements in stone if no one in your society can read! 

Last but not least, while everyone agrees that Spartan education was designed to turn the graduates of the agoge into good soldiers, the skills needed by a good soldier included far more than skill with weapons, physical fitness, endurance, and obedience. A good soldier also had to be able to track, to read the weather from the clouds, to navigate by the stars, to recognize poisonous plants, to apply first aid, to build fortifications and trenches, and much, much more. All this knowledge was transmitted to Spartan youth in the agoge.

Finally, let me turn to the most offensive aspect of this common picture: institutionalized pederasty. Without getting into a fight about the dating and nationality of the sources alleging institutionalized pederasty to Spartan society, the status of women in Sparta is even more widely attested and can be considered incontestable. Yet the high status of Sparta’s women is completely inconsistent with a society composed of men who were the victims of child abuse. Aristotle himself fumed against the power of women and attributed it to militaristic society in which homosexual love was not common. More important, modern psychology shows that abused boys grow up to despise women. Whatever else one can accuse the Spartans of doing, despising women was not one of them. Athenians, notably Aristophanes and Hesiod, on the contrary, very clearly did despise women and it was in Athens and Corinth that the archeological evidence likewise suggests widespread pederasty. Sparta stands out as the exception, which is probably why it was so profoundly misunderstood.

Stripped of common misperceptions about the nature of the Spartan agoge, the institution starts to look not only tolerable but even admirable – something that would be consistent with the historical record. We know that many men we admire for their intellect, including Socrates himself, were admirers of the Spartan agoge. It is time that modern observers of Spartan society stopped relying on familiar but illogical commentary and used common sense to assess the Spartan agoge.

"Leonidas of Sparta: A Boy of the Agoge" is a novel based on hypothesizes about the agoge consistent with the above thoughts. 

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